David Sedaris on Aging in the Gay Community: ‘You Wanna Go Back in Time and Have Sex With Yourself’

David Sedaris has an enlightening and slightly creepy message that he wants to impart on the youth of America: that you’re super sexy. He shared his views on a recent episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where Colbert asked the gay author to discuss the planning process for his upcoming commencement speech at Oberlin College.

“I started keeping a list of my wisdom,” Sedaris began. “Part of it is, you have to be really careful about scented candles. There’s really only two kinds worth having. And if you don’t get those two kinds of scented candles, you have to go without. It’s a hard lesson to learn. Diptyque or Trudon.”

“Your parents probably said to you, ’Well, you want to be in the arts, [so] you need to find something to fall back on,’” Sedaris told Colbert. “And I hear parents say that all the time. But I think if you find something to fall back on, you’re gonna fall back. I think that parents just don’t want their child to be broke and suffer rejection. But at 22 you’re built for poverty and rejection. In part, because you’re good looking.”

“As a kid you don’t realize it,” Sedaris went on. “Maybe those 22 year olds are comparing themselves to the person sitting next to them or two rows up, but they are stunning. They just can’t see it. But when you get to be 60, you’re like, why did nobody tell me. And if you’re gay, you want to get in a time machine and have sex with yourself. That’s how bad it is. But you don’t see it when you’re that age.”

Colbert responds, “That’s, that’s a creepy message.”

The cover of David Sedaris’ new book Calypso

After Sedaris shared his message for college grads, Colbert asked him about his new book Calypso, that hits book shelves next Tuesday. Sedaris described the title story, in which he discovered he had a benign tumor under his rib cage.

When he first discovered the tumor, Sedaris wanted it removed and given back to him so he may feed it so a snapping turtle. “He said it’s against the law for me to give you anything I remove from your body,” Sedaris explains. “But they give women babies, right? I mean, how is that fair?”

LOL.

Watch the hilarious David Sedaris interview here:

David Sedaris’ new collection of short stories Calypso comes out Tuesday.